


i agree with everything that's coming my way (but forgive me if you can)

by procrastinatingbookworm



Category: Hades (Video Game 2018)
Genre: Dehumanization, Dissociation, F/M, Flashbacks, How Do I Tag, Intersex Achilles, M/M, Multi, Non-Consensual Touching, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Rape/Non-con Elements, Self-Hatred
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-19
Updated: 2021-02-19
Packaged: 2021-03-14 20:26:51
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,550
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29547906
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/procrastinatingbookworm/pseuds/procrastinatingbookworm
Summary: Before Zagreus, Achilles didn't serve the House of Hades as a guardsman.He served as a work of art.(Fits alongsidethere are questions i can't ask (now at last the worst is over)andjust take the very best of mebut works as a stand-alone.)
Relationships: Achilles & Megaera (Hades Video Game), Achilles (Hades Video Game)/Other(s), Achilles/Megaera (Hades Video Game)
Kudos: 31





	i agree with everything that's coming my way (but forgive me if you can)

**Author's Note:**

> if this fic feels disjointed or meandering in any way, it's because it was going to be the setup a completely different fic, and then took on such a life of its own that i thought it deserved to be posted by itself. or blame the fact that achilles is dissociating the whole time.
> 
> achilles is intersex, his genitals are referred to as a cock and a slit.
> 
> heed the tags. this isn't consensual.

Achilles wasn’t a guardsman.

It was generally assumed that he was—he had armor, and a spear. He stood firm and upright in the perfect position to see the entirety of the Great Hall and both of its wings. He didn’t move, didn’t speak unless approached and addressed.

In life, he had been well-known for his martial prowess. Why wouldn’t he be employed for the same task in the afterlife?

But Achilles’ contract didn’t denote him as a guard. It described him as a _fixture._ ‘A fixture of the House of Hades,’ to be precise.

When he asked Lord Hades to clarify his responsibilities, Hades only laughed—that rumbling, sharp-edged sound that reminded Achilles uncomfortably of Agamemnon—and said “What other fixtures do you see, shade?”

And Achilles had understood.

He was a piece of art. Stamped with the mark of Hades’ ownership (he’d always thought that the pin on his cloak was unsightly, and now he knew why) and positioned in the hallway, on display.

It was incredibly egotistical, for someone who claimed to be the most humble of his brothers, but Achilles kept that particular thought to himself.

Achilles kept all his thoughts to himself, until the first time someone touched him.

He had heard the whispering already. It had been there from the start. He was recognizable and well-known, and had been familiar to so many of the dead. They had fought with him, or seen him fight, or died by his hand.

_Is that him?_ they asked each other, tugging at half-translucent sleeves, pointing fingers. They used his epithets as often as his name—Pelides, podarkes, _aristos achaion._

The last he nearly objected to, before he remembered that he wasn’t permitted to speak. He wasn’t _aristos achaion—_ the best of the Greeks had been Patroclus, not him.

Achilles had never been the best of anything.

But art didn’t speak, and neither did history. So Achilles let them call him what they would. Perhaps that was his punishment—to listen to even his contemporaries forget that Patroclus had been the better of the two of them.

It ached, but so did everything. Shades were made of memories, but Achilles was made of aching—all quiet, compounding pains.

It was bearable. 

Then they started to touch him.

He almost lashed out, the first time a shade brushed aside his cloak and grasped his arm. His whole body twitched at the sensation of it, then twitched again with the effort of not striking them, not running them through, not fleeing from the scrutiny, from the wide-eyed _staring_.

Caught up in the searing discomfort of it, his mind making a desperate attempt to escape what his body—such as it was—was bound to, he remembered his contract.

_A fixture of the House of Hades, available for interaction by occupants and visitors._

‘Available for interaction.’

Hades should have just written _free for use_. At least that would have been honest—would have prepared Achilles for this. For cold fingers kneading against his upper arm, so compelled by the sight of him that they just had to get their hand on his skin.

The shades grew braver, after the first one touched him with no consequence. _You’re allowed,_ they murmured, nudging each other closer. _It’s why he’s here._

What remained of Achilles’ pride stung, at that, mostly because they were right. He was here—not in the pits of Tartarus, or confined to Asphodel, or anything else he had offered in exchange for Patroclus’ safety—because Hades thought him pretty. Not useful, or worthy. Just pretty.

The shades seemed to agree.

They approached him, one or two at a time. They touched his hands, his arms, his feet. Marveled over his famed features, gossiped about his exploits. Pulled up his chiton to squeeze at the muscle of his legs, trace the tendons of his calves, thumb at the scar on his heel.

It didn’t progress any further than that, for a while, though Achilles knew it would. He had been at war; he knew the nature of men when faced with a helpless thing.

Before it reached that point, one of the hands—a familiar one, for all that Achilles tried not to keep track of who touched him—took hold of his hair.

Achilles gripped his spear until his fingers ached.

This was why he was here. They were allowed this.

(Pat’s hands in his hair, braiding it tightly against his scalp, safe from the filth of war for the length of winter, while it was too cold to wash.)

The hand tugged, wound around a curl.

(Athena seizing him by the hair, dragging him away from Agamemnon.)

Tugged, lifted, dropped. Reached back, grabbed a fistful. Tugged, stroked.

(Blood and river mud drying in his hair, matting it against his scalp. Odysseus, weary with loss and brittle with hope, grasping a gore-soaked curl and dodging Achilles’ retaliatory swipe at him— _at least do it up if you’re going to refuse to wash it._ )

Fingers laced through his curls.

Achilles tasted blood.

He blinked, and Megaera was there. She’d pushed him against the wall, not quite covering his body with hers, but close to it. Her hand was wrapped around his on the shaft of his spear.

“Easy,” she was saying, low and gentle. “Easy, now. Easy.”

“They’re allowed,” he said, voice cracking out of his chest like an arrow from behind.

He blinked. Tasted blood, tasted mud. Tasted pyre-ash, tasted rot. He felt his shoulders heave, felt himself try to flee. 

He saw Megaera push him back, flat against the wall, hands pinned down to keep the violence inside him, but he couldn’t feel her body against his.

Blinked. The hall was gone. Megaera was still there, with a bottle of nectar in her hands. The lounge was around them, too quiet and too still.

“They won’t do that again,” she said. His hands shook, so she helped him drink. “I can give you that.”

She said _give_ , but she meant _buy_ —with favors, with opportunities, with a blind eye turned. She would pay for her kindness, if the weakness she’d given herself didn’t make her suffer for it, first.

Achilles knew how to be cruel. He knew how to make a shield of it. For her, for him. He knew how to cut the arrow out before the poison could kill. In a place like this, it was safer to be untethered. This was not war. This was the domain of gods far more powerful than Ares.

But Achilles was selfishly grateful and deeply tired, and the nectar was sweet, so he kept his cruelty in his throat.

***

It went on.

Shades stared, touched, talked. They kept their hands out of his hair, for the most part—Megaera had kept her promise. 

Achilles was no stranger to attention—when he’d been alive, he’d been observed almost as constantly as this. But he’d had a tent, then. He’d had Patroclus. 

The tents on the beaches of Troy were gone. Patroclus was gone. There were only the eyes, the hands, the voices.

Megaera brought him nectar. Not every day or night, but often enough. It was forbidden in the house, but it seemed easy enough to come by. A day’s salary and the right gestures exchanged with the shade in the lounge.

Eventually, he started buying it for himself. It… helped.

Maybe it was the nectar, maybe it was the mind’s capacity for self-protection, but Achilles didn’t remember when the shades first began to…

He didn’t know how to categorize it, what to call it. It all blurred together, the gawking and the touching and groping. Achilles tried to let himself forget.

He drank too much nectar and let Megaera tend him and stood very still at his post and stared over the heads of the shades as they pulled his chiton up to his hips and touched him.

Achilles was glad that the shades around him were dead, and couldn’t spread their gossip to the living. Otherwise he would be remembered for this, above all else. For his cock and his slit and the way he twitched under the chill of a shade’s grasping hand.

There was a word for it. Achilles’ father had told him, a long time ago. A word for the place between. He didn’t remember it—anything his father had said to him was long since lost to the fog of insufficient mortal memory.

His time as a living mortal really _was_ a different lifetime, in all senses of it. It felt fittingly distant, some of it more than others. 

Anything before Chiron was dull, like a dream more than a memory. There was nothing before Patroclus—just a faint awareness of sunshine and music and olive pits.

There was a word, Achilles knew. He chased it through his memories while cold fingers wrapped around the short length of his cock, dipped into his slit.

He was grateful, distantly, for their incorporeality, and his own. The slit wasn’t deep—they would hurt him with their jabbing fingers, if this were an encounter between the living.

Achilles would never have let this happen, when he was alive. He was too prideful for that, to be reduced to a toy at the hands of strangers.

Except, well... he had been. Not like this, but what was the difference? He’d been a plaything of gods and a figurehead of the Greeks—his armor, even on Patroclus, who could not look more unlike Achilles if he tried, had been enough to rout the Trojans. 

A hand grazed his neck, far too close to his hair for comfort. A finger pushed into his slit, made his thighs twitch with the effort of not recoiling.

There was someone watching him. Achilles didn’t turn his head, but he shifted his gaze sideways, and caught sight of a blur of grey in his periphery.

It was Thanatos, again.

Thanatos was a new arrival to the House, though as a god he was one of the eldest. Something had happened, that was all Achilles knew—all that Megaera would tell him. Something to do with the bandages around his wrists and throat, and the way his right arm ended in a stump, rather than a hand.

He said very little, hovering unobtrusively at the far end of the West Hall, on the balcony overlooking the Styx. His face was gaunt beneath curtains of white hair.

He watched Achilles, when he wasn’t watching the river. He never came close enough for Achilles to see his expression, never spoke, never approached or touched.

Like the rest of the House, he watched it happen.

Achilles couldn’t fault Thanatos or Megaera or any of the House servants for that. They were employed here just as he was, under contracts much like his. Whatever they thought of it, there was nothing they could do.

This was why Achilles was here. Like a maiden captured in a wartime raid, a possession of her captors.

He thought, distantly and painfully, of Briseis. Was this his punishment for the way he’d treated her? He’d been kind to her, at first, but when his pride took him, he laid his wrath on her shoulders, made her suffer for it.

“If you needed to be punished, Achilles,” Megaera said, when he asked her something to that effect, “I would have done it already. What you’re doing is your job. Now pass the nectar.”

Achilles had met people whose work was for the pleasure of others. That wasn’t this. This was… if not a punishment, then a _consequence._ A result of both his ill temper and his far-too-late eagerness to make amends.

“You could have asked to be with him,” Megaera said, later. They were in bed together—her suggestion, to his agreement. Hands on him that he could trust were a welcome distraction. “People have done that. Especially since _she_ was still here when you came. She’s convinced him to let people _leave_ before. Well, nearly.”

Achilles shut his eyes. He thought of Pat’s face—tear-streaked and desperate, planting a firm, furious kiss on his lips before he donned Achilles’ helmet and walked to his death.

“If I were Patroclus,” Achilles began, his voice cracking on the name. “I wouldn’t want to see me again.” 

Megaera’s thumb brushed slowly across the inside of his thigh, which didn’t help the lump in his throat. “Achilles,” she said, in the gentle way that meant she was going to hurt him. “If you’re this unhappy, you can petition to change your contract.”

Achilles turned his head to press his forehead against her shoulder, thinking of Hades and Agamemnon and Odysseus, carrying their heartache in the cold, hard lines of their mouths and shoulders. “Perhaps when Nyx returns.”

Half the sentence went unspoken: _Perhaps when Nyx returns, things will be better._

Nyx had to return. She was the heart and throat of the house. Maybe then Hades would be… more reasonable. Less cruel. It wouldn’t bring Persephone back, but Hades had never managed well alone.

Megaera sighed, like she knew something he didn’t, rubbing gently at his thigh. “Perhaps.”

***

In the chaos of Nyx returning to the House of Hades with a squalling infant god that the whole House had assumed was dead, Achilles was all but forgotten about.

The House was closed for visitors, so the halls were all but empty, and the shades and gods that were there had little time to admire the artwork.

Achilles couldn’t say for certain how long he’d been in the House, but it was long enough that the shades that were employed there were all familiar with him. They had satiated their curiosity in his earlier days at the House, and ceased to touch him, except for the occasional overly-affectionate squeeze as they passed him.

Now even that had stopped. 

Not that Achilles minded. He appreciated having his body to himself for a while. 

But it gave him time to think. Time when he mind wasn’t prying at the confines of his body to be anywhere but there. Time to observe the House around him. 

In all the commotion, he noticed someone missing.

“Is anyone going to tell—” Achilles started, one of the few times Megaera blew through the lounge while he happened to be there, in between whatever work had her rushing in and out of the House.

He didn’t finish his question before Megaera stopped him with a tongue-click and a hiss, like Pat would do to call a dog to heel.

“Don’t say her name. Lord Hades is angry enough already.”

Then she was gone again, before Achilles had the chance to ask _doesn’t she deserve to know?_

Achilles thought of Antilochus, crying nearly as hard as Achilles himself was, wrenching Achilles’ sword out of his hand.

The lounge bent, blurred. Megaera was gone. Somewhere in the distance, the infant god—Zagreus—was wailing, the noise soaring above the voices gathered around it, sharp-edged with fear.

Achilles ached to flee, but there was nowhere to go.

Instead, he bought himself a bottle of nectar, and for the first time since he’d arrived at the House, neglected his post. He stayed in the lounge and drank until his pockets were empty.

If anyone noticed his absence, they didn’t say.


End file.
